Q: How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner , iSpionage , SpyFu , and SEMrush , we craft a keyword strategy. Next, we: Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.

Question 1

What to Expect With Competitor Campaigns

Accepted Answer

Competitor Campaigns:

These campaigns tend to have a shorter sales cycle.
They are also known to drive more branded search (because someone shopping a competitor’s site, might come back to Google after not finding what they were looking for, remember your name, and type that in).
Don’t expect to have a high quality score on campaigns like this because the content on the site will never have the keyword (the competitor brand) in it.
It is almost always a trademark violation to put your competitor’s business name into your ad copy.
If you do not have a direct/obvious competitor, some nuance needs to be taken into consideration:
- For example, you might want to target a big brand who steals most of your business, but since the big brand sells more than just the products that you sell, you will need to target keywords that include both the competitor’s name and the product.
- Sometimes this is the case with smaller competitors, as well, in which case try both strategies (target just the competitor’s name and also the competitor + product as keywords).

Question 2

Why do you charge a 10% fee?

Accepted Answer

Nearly all of our costs are based on how much we spend (this includes click fraud prevention, vendors, and software and monitoring tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, iSpionage, SpyFu, and SEMrush).

So, we simply cannot scale profitably without a benchmark set against spend.

More to the point:

**The larger a campaign gets, the larger the workload to manage. **

As data-driven marketers, everything we do is based on data-driven optimization. Every dollar spent is a data point and every data point requires action.

The more you spend, the more work involved in managing and optimizing the campaign.

The benefit to both of us is you'll never choose to spend more without a high-performing campaign. So, the system ends up being meritocratic in construct.

And, because we charge a base, plus a small percentage (unlike many high-end agencies that simply charge a much larger percentage across the board), our campaigns become more profitable as a percentage as you grow.

As far as the agencies that don't charge a percentage fee…

They're actually showing their hand in doing so.

In fact, we would bet every single one of them is using automated bidding tools to attempt to manage your campaign through the use of "AI" — without the expenditure in human capital.

Still concerned about the fee? Let’s talk about it.

Question 3

Is my website ready for PPC ads?

Accepted Answer

In order to satisfy Google, there are a few of their policies that we must abide by as advertisers in order to gain the full scope of the platform's capabilities.

Google's primary goal is to keep its users happy, and Google has a plethora of people wanting to advertise to Google's users. In other words, Google gets to pick and choose which ads they present to their audience.

The bad news is that we have to compete against those other ads. The good news is that Google doesn't discriminate as long as you follow their guidelines and rules.

Individual "Thank You" page For All Forms

Essentially, this means that after a user has completed a desired action on your website (e.g. a purchase has been completed, or someone filled out a form) a "Thank You" page needs to be displayed.

Mobile Responsive

This is a big one. Have you ever visited a website on your mobile phone? We're positive you have. Have you ever visited a site on your mobile phone, only to have the end result be some "zoomed-in" portion of the main website?

Pretty annoying, right?

Google actually pays attention to these kinds of things, and classifies these seemingly minor things as "user experience".

Basically, the better the user experience is on your website, the higher your quality score for your advertisements. This, in turn, leads to happier users and better ad ranking for your advertisements (which oftentimes means more sales).

Site Speed

This is another factor that Google looks at heavily. According to a study done by the website Hubspot, if your website makes you an average of $100,000 a day, a 1-second decrease in page load time can increase your sales by about $7,000.

It seems like such an insignificant detail, but in the hustle and bustle of today's environment, people want things and they want them now.

Moreover, if your site takes too long to load, you run the risk of people bouncing off of your site. That means that they click on your advertisement (you pay for that click) and then they leave the website before it fully loads, before you have a chance to sell them your offer, all because it took just a little too long for the site to load for them.

Again a minor detail, but it has huge consequences.

Privacy Policy

A privacy policy is a requirement that indicates to your website's visitors how their personal information will be stored in your system. Things like website cookies, email addresses, credit card information all fall under this category.

Don't worry, you don't need to pay a lawyer the big bucks to write you one of these. You just need to explain to the website visitor, in a transparent way, where their information is being stored (if at all) and what is being done with that information.

Have A Physical Address On Your Site

This is something that Google looks for to see that you are a legitimate business and not some scammer who's claiming they're in California but really on the other side of the planet.

The benefit of this is that it satisfies Google, but it also makes your website visitors feel more at ease when they are considering purchasing your products/services. It instills trust in your website visitors, and often times more trust equals higher conversions and more sales.

Your Phone Number On Your Site Should Be Coded Text

This is a bit of a more technical detail. Google is very smart, but sometimes it needs some help. Having a phone number on your website is another thing that you can do to instill more trust in your website visitors, and possibly boost conversions.

However, from a technical standpoint, Google can't recognize that phone number if it's in an image and not coded onto the page.

If you have a web developer, they should be very familiar with the difference.

Have An Email Address Listed On The Site

Just like having a phone number and physical location, Google wants you to have a way for website visitors to reach you by email.

Again, just like a phone number, this needs to be coded into the webpage and not an image so that Google can read it.

eCommerce Websites

These next two points are specifically for eCommerce websites that sell physical items.

Have A Published Return Policy

A return policy is standard practice for physical stores, and it should be no different for online stores.

Just like the privacy policy, you don't need a lawyer to create this for you (although, by all means, if you feel more comfortable having a lawyer write it for you, have a lawyer write one for you).

A return policy can be very simple. It just tells the user what to expect should they want to return their item or get a refund. Questions that could be answered include: How long do I have to return my item? What's your policy if my item arrives broken?

Have A Published Shipping Policy

People want to know how long it's going to take for their item to arrive from the moment that the order is placed.

It's always a good idea to set expectation ahead of time. So be sure to tell your website visitors in your Shipping Policy how long it takes to process an order, and what kind of shipping speeds your business offers.

That was a lot! Don't worry though...

These are all seemingly minor things, but the devil is in the details. Not only are you satisfying Google's guidelines by having these things in place, but you are also boosting trust with your website visitors.

Higher trust with your visitors means higher conversions, which means higher sales.

Question 4

Providing Solutions 8 with access to your Google My Business (GMB) account

Accepted Answer

Sign in here: https://www.google.com/business/
Choose the account you would like us to have access to
Choose "Users" on the left hand side
Select the "Invite new users" icon
Enter the email address you have been provided by your customer manager
Choose the role: "Manager"
Select "Invite"

Question 5

How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Accepted Answer

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, iSpionage, SpyFu, and SEMrush, we craft a keyword strategy.

Next, we:

Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords
Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate
Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click

This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.

Question 6

What Can I Afford To Pay For A Lead From Paid Ads?

Accepted Answer

If you’ve been using Google Ads or other paid advertising platforms to generate leads, you probably noticed that among all of them, Google tends to have the highest cost per lead (CPL).

Why?

Because the conversion rates of those leads are usually higher. Google understands the intention of its users and uses their algorithm to actively seek out users who have shown an interest in your product—those who are ready to buy.

According to Unbounce, “50% of people arriving at a retailers site from paid ads are more likely to buy than those who came from an organic link.” Click-throughs from PPC results convert 1.5 times more than organic search results (Atomic Reach). Meaning, in terms of getting higher bottom-funnel conversions, PPC beats SEO.

To make sure you have a well-optimized PPC campaign that generates revenue, it’s crucial to gather conversion data first. Sure, it might take some time. But it’s one of the most important elements in building high-performing campaigns that give you a huge return for every dollar you spend in advertising.

Question 7

Adding Solutions 8 to your Google Ads account

Accepted Answer

To begin, we’ll need you to send us your 10-digit Google Ads Customer ID. Please send this information directly to your Solutions 8 contact requesting this.

Here is a screenshot of where to look for the ID in your Google Ads Account:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/qshsy3lVaU/2020-10-07_2-55-46.jpg (2020-10-07_2-55-46.jpg)

We will send an email from our Google Ads Manager Account requesting that you grant us with access. This email will go to the email address that is connected to your Google Ads account.

The email will look like this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/0mjr8eByHz/account-access-email-1.jpg (account-access-email-1.jpg)

Please press "Accept Request"

From here, you will be prompted to log in to your Google Ads account.

Go to your Tools & Settings > Access and Security

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/7HfA7c6hQS/2020-10-07_2-42-35.jpg (2020-10-07_2-42-35.jpg)

In here, you'll see a pending invite from Solutions 8 - Google Partner

Hit Accept and we will get notified

After we receive access to your account, it typically takes us 3 to 4 business days to complete a full evaluation.

Should you choose to engage Solutions 8 for regular Google Ads management, we'll need to perform this process a second time in order to transfer your account access from our review account to our management account.

Question 8

How do I know the cost per aquisition of a client if Google Ads is only bringing in leads?

Accepted Answer

If your Google Ads account is gathering leads (as opposed to revenue), then it will be important to manually determine the cost per aquisition of a customer. Cost per aquisition, or CPA, is your bottom line, after all.

Getting to the bottom of this number is not always straightforward, but it is always worth the effort.

THe goal is to look through your recent sales and leads, and then to try to determine the average conversion rate of a lead that comes from Google Ads. That way we can apply the conversion rate to the performance reported by Google Ads in order to determine the CPA of a customer/client.

Here is an example of the math equation that needs to be done:

If your CRM/sales reps are able to find 19 leads that originally came from Google Ads in the past 4 months.

And 8 of those leads converted into a customer/client.

Then, 8 converted leads out of 19 total leads is a 42% conversion rate from Google Ads.

If Google Ads is reporting 63 leads in the past 4 months and spent $20,000 in ad spend to do that, let's apply the 42% conversion rate to those numbers:

42% of the 63 leads gathered by Google Ads is 26.46 leads that were converted into clients, theoretically.

$20,000 spent on ads divided by 26.46 clients means each client cost $756.

Now that you know each client cost $756, you can ask yourself: Is that a profitable amount to spend aquiring a client based on how much revenue clients bring in over their lifetime with the business, on average? If so, then it's probably time to start talking about increasing the monthly ad spend to begin scaling how many leads are coming in each month.

How to find the leads that came from Google Ads

Leads that submit a form will need to be tracked using UTM parameters. This will need to be done ahead of time, so that the contacts in your CRM can be identified as having Google Ads as their source.

Leads that call your business won't have any UTM parameters attached to their contact record (and, in many cases, won't have a contact record unless the person who answered the phone added them into the CRM). In this case, we can send you a list of names & phone numbers from our call tracking app, and then you can manually match up your recent sales/new customers/new clients to the list.

Question 9

Why is my profit margin becoming thinner as we scale?

Accepted Answer

When you increase ad spend, it's common to see an increase in your CPL or a decrease in your ROAS. Here's why.

Increasing our ad spend means we are targeting a larger audience. These are people who aren’t ready to buy––and it takes more clicks and longer time to convert them.

Simultaneously, we are competing with big players who have enough money to over-bid on keywords. This brings our CPC up.

The more we expand the audience size, the less certain Google’s algorithm will be when they show an ad. That’s because we’re pushing the algorithm to go into uncharted territory––it doesn’t know who to target yet.

If our low-hanging-fruits are composed of only a small portion of our audience, it’s hard for Google’s algorithm to determine who will go for the click.

So we need to warm up our audience and add “brand awareness” strategies until the top-of-the-funnel audience gains familiarity with our brand.

For example, we can run a display ad that targets a proactive (not remarketed) audience. This might not get many clicks but we’ll get views that can increase our brand awareness.

How do we spend more without diminishing profit margin (i.e. lowering ROAS or increasing CPL)?

It is nearly impossible to increase your budget without thinning your profit margin, at least for a short time.

To balance it, we recommend temporarily “leaning out” your account when trying to scale. This helps you preserve your profit margin while waiting for the algorithm to adjust to a higher ad spend.

Here are a few of ways to do that:

Pause brand awareness campaigns like video shopping
Scale back brand campaigns by reducing budget and or changing bids
Find brand keywords that are taking money in the other search campaigns

When a campaign isn’t limited by budget, we can often increase the spend without lowering ROAS by much at all.

But what if your account has maxed out its spend and reached its entire market/audience?

Use lower-spend outbound campaigns. These are campaigns like YouTube or Display that help increase your brand awareness and introduce your offer to a new audience.

Start running these campaigns with a lower budget and analyze how they affect your overall campaign performance.

You will sacrifice your ROAS with these new outbound campaigns. So it’s best to keep the ad spend low in the beginning.

As a result, your main campaign conversion driver should become more active.

You’ll be able to increase your outbound campaigns’ budget incrementally.

Question 10

Why is my cost per click so high?

Accepted Answer

Having a high CPC (Cost-Per-Click) usually stems from competiting against many other competitors going for the same targeted keywords.

We can break this down for you by going to your "Auction Insights" and showing you what competitors are targeting the same keywords you are, and where they are on the SERP (Search Results Page) relative to your position.

Generally, here at Solutions 8 we aim to give you the highest ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) possible. This means we target keywords that are most likely to lead to conversions (Phone Calls, Purchases, Form Submissions, etc.).

If these profitable keywords also have high competition and high CPC, we need to "play the game" and bid competitively to appear near the top of the page to attract the most likely to convert customers that are looking for your products & services.

Our initial strategy is to start with targeting the bottom of the page until we can gather enough click-through data and conversion data to identify patterns.

Once we have a sense of which keywords are going to be effective, we might decide to bid competitively one a handful of them to appear at the top of the page, since we'll have the data to make us confident that it will be worth the risk to purchase those expensive clicks.